February 7, 2006

Bye, Baruchito

RIP Baruchito. The flagship hamster of Baruchito's homeCage has passed away after struggling with the stress of a flea infection and the medication applied to it. Baru was just a couple of months shy of three years -- which is a venerable old hamster age. While he may not have been as notorious as certain late pancake-stacked pets, Baru still lived a full life of fuzzy cuteness and aaaawww-inspiring photos. Those of you with hamsters, won't you arrange them now in missing-man formation?
posted by brownpau at 10:38 PM PST - 17 comments

heck of a job, George

Updatefilter: George C. Deutsch has resigned. (for NYT links, see BugMeNot)
(T)he young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters' access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said. (previously discussed here on MeFi)

Mr. Deutsch's resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted. [...]

Mr. Deutsch, 24, was offered a job as a writer and editor in NASA's public affairs office in Washington last year after working on President Bush's re-election campaign and inaugural committee, according to his résumé. No one has disputed those parts of the document.
posted by edverb at 10:28 PM PST - 88 comments

Matthew Koso Goes To Jail

Family Values. Today Matthew Koso, 23, was sentenced to 18-30 months in a Nebraska state prison for having consensual sex with his wife, Crystal, 15, notwithstanding the fact that their marriage was legally celebrated in neighboring Kansas. In the photo gallery you can view pictures of the victim of this crime as well as the state's key piece of evidence, who will be without a father for the next year and a half or so. (Previous Mefi thread here. Today's links via How Appealing.)
posted by Saucy Intruder at 9:28 PM PST - 142 comments

I mean dude, have you ever really LOOKED at your fingers?

It's dactylfractal time....
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 9:25 PM PST - 28 comments

Marshall Oak, Starfleet Captain

Marshall Oak, Starfleet Captain is a photo gallery of 184 shots of Star Trek with Marshal Oak photoshopped in. Obsessive fan? Visual Slash Fiction? SciFi Where's Waldo? All of the above.
posted by mathowie at 7:57 PM PST - 60 comments

Oil Sucks

All Your Oil Are Belong To Us. Coming off of a recordbreaking profitable quarter, the good chaps at ExxonMobil laugh at your puny attempts to get off of oil.
posted by owillis at 4:48 PM PST - 82 comments

Philosophy trivia and snacks

Test your knowledge of philosophy with the 2006 IAP Philosophy Trivia Quiz! This quiz is extremely hard, so you might want to take a break at the Cognitive Science Cafe [pdf].
posted by painquale at 4:27 PM PST - 10 comments

The Steam Tank

The Steam Tank is a brief visual effects reel by Chris Paul, from the Vancouver Film School. It begins with a somewhat mundane steam powered tank attacking a mounted gun in a downtown building, but then replays the event shot by shot, showing the original filmed plate, and adding on each cgi component, to give a good idea of how cg & reality interface in an effects piece. warning: link goes to direct download of 56MB QuickTime mov
posted by jonson at 4:09 PM PST - 13 comments

Rep. John Boehner Gets Huge Overnight

Boehner Gets Huge Overnight The Congressman with the unfortunately spelled last name was elected House Majority Leader last week--it was only a matter of time....(embedded movie).
posted by P-Soque at 3:14 PM PST - 49 comments

Foreign Aid

Newsfilter: "France can take Treme. The king of Jordan can take the Lower Ninth Ward." Ray Nagin seeks international assistance after a certain superpower comes up short. [via Humid City]
posted by brundlefly at 3:07 PM PST - 13 comments

I met someone sometime ago, his eyes were clear to seeeeee...

Open up your mind and let everything come through. Psych and Prog get great sharity treatment. (ChrisGoes is also known for his regular appearance on torrent sites with his huge, wonderful collections).
posted by klangklangston at 3:06 PM PST - 11 comments

The Roots Music Listening Room

The Roots Music Listening Room for Collectors of American Roots Music. We feature Old-Time Strings Bands, Ballads & Breakdowns, Early Blues & Gospel, some Early Jazz, Vintage Country Gospel, Early Bluegrass and various Ethnic Musics played by immigrants to America. Most of this material was originally recorded in the 1920s through the early 1950s and was first issued on 78 RPM Records. (Out of consideration for others only download about 15-20 songs in one day.)
posted by crunchland at 2:38 PM PST - 24 comments

...With bows in her hair, And nothing is better than that

Science is better: An enormous scientific study has conclusively demonstrated that "diet had no effect" on rates of women getting cancer or heart disease. Because the study investigated the efficacy of overall low fat diets, rather than the more recently developed hypothesis that saturated fats are the only pernicious kind, some leading medical researchers accept these findings but still think there MAY be a direct link between certain diets and major health problems in women, but (and here's the money shot) "if they did a study like that and it was negative, then I'd have to give up my cherished hypotheses for data." Now that, my friends, is a heartwarming example of one of the pinnacles of human creativity, the scientific method, which is under so much attack these days. . .
posted by twsf at 2:23 PM PST - 29 comments

Search through Enron emails! Win an Ipod Shuffle

Find offensive content! The people at Inboxer allow you register for a free account to use their antispam software on approximately 500,000 Enron emails in a database. According to a Wired article, the appliance has found 71,268 inappropriate messages.

And just to add to the fun, they're offering to give away 3 Ipod Shuffles for people who submit the best emails in the "I'd fire him/her" the "Funniest Joke", and the "What were they thinking?" categories. Just to give you an idea of what we're talking about here, check out this lovely Booty Call contract. Also, check out the whitepaper they've written, Monsters in your mailbox (.pdf), and get worried if you're using your business email account for personal messages!
posted by jasper411 at 2:15 PM PST - 28 comments

BLM Pulls Funding After Controversial Results Emerge

First it was announced that an Oregon State University graduate student was publishing a story in the journal Science. titled, "Post-Wildfire Logging Hinders Regeneration and Increases Fire Risk," which undercut Bush administration-backed arguments for post-wildfire logging. A week later it was made public that nine professors in the College of Forestry (which gets 10% of its funding from a logging tax) lobbied the journal not to publish the article. Among them was John Sessions, lead author of a report that pressed the U.S. Forest Service to expand salvage logging. After attention was brought to the professors' attempts to keep the article from being published, many worried about the university's reputation regarding academic freedom, if not the state of academic freedom throughout the academic world. However if it wasn't difficult enough to just worry about your own professors standing in the way of getting your data published, you also have to worry about the government pulling your funding if your data doesn't match the data they want to see.

"The Bureau of Land Management acknowledged Monday that it asked OSU if the three-year study led by graduate student Daniel Donato and published last month in the journal Science violated provisions of a $300,000 federal fire research grant that prohibits using any of the funds to lobby Congress and requires that a BLM scientist be consulted before the research is published."

"It's totally without precedent as far as I can recollect," said Jerry Franklin, a professor at the University of Washington who has studied Northwest forests for decades. "It says, 'If we don't like what you're saying, we'll cut off your money.' "
posted by pwb503 at 1:58 PM PST - 52 comments

Jean-Luc Godard's 'Histoire(s) du Cinéma'

The Man With The Magnétoscope.
"How marvelous to be able to look at what you cannot see... cinema, like Christianity, is not founded on historical truth. It supplies us with a story and says: Believe — believe come what may."
Jean Luc Godard's 'Histoire(s) du Cinéma' at UCLA.
posted by matteo at 12:55 PM PST - 10 comments

Supreme Court Oral Argument MP3s.

The Oyez Project has placed online mp3s for all of the arguments from the 2004 term of the United States Supreme Court. The 2004 terms spans all cases argued between October 4, 2004, and April 27, 2005, including United States v. Booker and United States v. FanFan, Roper v. Simmons , Raich v. Gonzales, Kelo v. City of New London, McCreary County v. ACLU, and Van Orden v. Perry. [slightly more inside]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 11:38 AM PST - 27 comments

Musical Listening Study

The Musical Listening test is harder than it sounds, no pun intended. Hosted at the University of Newcastle at Tyne, it is a study of musical perception in the general population. Listen to two short melodic phrases and decide if they are the same or different.
posted by pjern at 11:38 AM PST - 57 comments

Images-skin disease diagnosis

What's That? -- skin trouble and bioterrorism, diagnostic help Probably not safe for work viewing
posted by hank at 11:05 AM PST - 7 comments

Hybrids: the silent killers

*Look* both ways before you cross the street "The dangerous drawbacks of driving a hybrid: it's so quiet that pedestrians can't hear it when it's starting up or idling, and they often walk right into the path of the moving vehicle." I've got a feeling this is how I'm going to buy it. Oh well, like the lady said, if it's not one thing it's another. Tip of the hat to Kausfiles via Auto Blog.
posted by mojohand at 10:38 AM PST - 97 comments

Turkey Gets Tough

Turkey gets tough in Valley of the Wolves Iraq. Previously, Turkey has reenvisioned Star Wars and the Wizard of Oz to the delight of many. Now, Turkish movie-goers are clamoring for this Rambo rip-off in which a Turkish intelligence officer seeks out a rogue unit of U.S. troops led by Billy Zane! The film, which also features Gary Busey, begins with a scene based on the U.S. raid of a Turkish special forces office.
posted by lunalaguna at 10:35 AM PST - 34 comments

DisCHARGEd

Dear First Lieutenant Rebrook: Thank you for your service to your country. Here's your medical discharge, and here's a bill for $700 to cover the loss of the armor you ruined by bleeding all over it when you got shot.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 8:39 AM PST - 86 comments

Obama wins -- Collegiality!

"I hold no hard feelings over your earlier disingenuousness." McCain and Obama engage in the Senate equivalent of The Dozens.
posted by empath at 7:36 AM PST - 138 comments

She's got the angles!

MySpace: The Movie (embedded .wmv) - Oh that Tom, he's everybody's friend!
posted by Space Coyote at 7:23 AM PST - 16 comments

US Army gives advice on picking a partner

US Army Teaches Troops How to Pick a Spouse "Army chaplains are trying to teach troops how to pick the right spouse, through a program called "How To Avoid Marrying a Jerk. ... It teaches the lovestruck to pace themselves with a R.A.M. chart — the Relationship Attachment Model — which basically says don't let your sexual involvement exceed your level of commitment or level of knowledge about the other person."

I can't decide if this is common sense or takes all the fun out of love. If, indeed, there is any fun in it. Details on the programme can also be found at www.nojerks.com
posted by badlydubbedboy at 5:37 AM PST - 43 comments

Indonesia - new species discovered

"Lost World" found in Indonesian Papua (with audio)
posted by Protocols of the Elders of Awesome at 5:16 AM PST - 21 comments

Let's talk about debt.

More red ink. The White House has just released the budget for 2007. If approved by Congress, this budget would increase defense spending by 24%, cut money from healthcare, education, and the environment all while adding another $354 billion to the U.S. debt. (NPR analysis.). At the end of FY2000, the U.S. debt - the accumulation of the deficit spending of all previous 42 U.S. Presidents - was $5,674,178,209,886.86. Today it is $8,195,544,127,376.07 (here is an up-to-the-minute estimate.) Bush took office with a budget surplus and a forecast of a cumulative 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. In just 6 years, the party of tax cuts and balanced budgets , under the steady leadership of President number 43 has added 45% to the Ú.S. national debt.
posted by three blind mice at 5:04 AM PST - 77 comments

'Teddy, don't worry, now mommy's here....'

Teddy Girls
posted by anastasiav at 4:49 AM PST - 57 comments

Marching orders

He wasn't asked. He didn't tell. Now he's out — and discharged. Eye-opening tale of Jeff Howe, courtesy of Raw Story. After 9/11, feeling personally unfulfilled and wanting to serve his country, Howe enlisted at the age of 29. Knowing he was gay but realizing that Army guidelines forbade his kind, he re-entered the closet, underwent basic training, and was shipped to Iraq. After a two-year stint on the front lines, with five commendations, he returned stateside. Then he was stop-lossed, shipped back to Iraq, and started writing a blog. That began a chain of events that, through no apparent fault of his own — or loose lip-flapping — led to Jeff Howe and the Army parting company.
posted by rob511 at 3:33 AM PST - 38 comments

Alas, a self-godwining thread

H1t3r pwnd UK, USA! A gunnery has been discovered, buried beneath a metre of iron-rich Normandy soil. It was likely part of a ruse on the part of the Axis forces: a fake gunnery was also built, less conspicuously, and it took the abuse. It was forgotten -- or the memory at least buried by the locals and those who fought there -- until recently. Now it appears to explain some puzzles about Bloody Omaha [pic].
posted by five fresh fish at 12:57 AM PST - 49 comments

The Buddha project

The Buddha project "The Buddha Project encourages people worldwide to participate by submitting photos of found Buddha, sacred Buddha, ancient Buddha, kitschy Buddha, handmade Buddha"
posted by dhruva at 12:26 AM PST - 12 comments

« Previous day | Next day »